the deck over and over.
"Where got I the chips, did you ask, Quacco? Oh, oh, oh!—Why, Heaven forgive me—but I am punished for it now—they are the very splinters of your fetish, that you brought on board!"
Up started the black resetter as if bit by a rattlesnake, dancing and jumping, "Oh, my tomack, oh, my tomack!—de fetish have get into my tomack—de leetle debil in a my tomack. Oh, doctor, doctor!—one evil spirit in me—oh, doctor, someting to make him fly—someting to get him out! Doctor, de debil in a my belly—physic—physic, doctor; de strongerer de more betterer. Oh Lord!" And away he tumbled down the fore-hatchway, roaring for Esculapius like a perfect bull of Bashan.
While we were laughing at this to our heart's content, Mr. Marline came aft to us. "There are a good many dark specks passing and repassing above us in the furthermost reach of the river, yonder, sir—as far as you can see there, sir. Will you please to look at them, Mr. Sprawl?"
Sprawl took a long squint first, and then handed the glass to me. I peered, and peered. The glorious stream was rolling down like a shining flow of quicksilver; but although all continued quiet in our vicinity, yet, where it narrowed nearly to a bright point in the distance above, I could perceive a tiny dark object slowly descend the river, and send up a thick cloud of smoke, after which it remained stationary, while a number of small black spots were seen cruising hither and thither all around it.
Sprawl had also noticed this. "Why, Brail, those gentry seem mustering in some strength. There cannot be many fewer than a hundred canoes paddling about there. What say you?"
It was now near three, P.M., and we were bethinking ourselves of going to dinner, when a perfect cloud of the dark specks, fifty at the least, began to drop down with the ebb in a solid phalanx, looking in the distance like a compact black raft of wood. Presently they sheered off right and left; and although the craft from which we had seen the smoke arise, still remained at anchor in the stream, the attendant canoes vanished, one and all, amongst the mangroves, on either bank. "Poo—nonsense!" said Dick Lanyard. "Come along, Sprawl—come along. Why, man, we shall get as thin as whipping-posts, if we allow these barbarian demonstrations to interfere with our comforts."
"You may be right, my boy—you may be right," said old Davie; but he appeared to have some strange misgivings.
However, we went to dinner; the reefers were all with us, little Joe Peake among the rest, who was now quite recovered from the thump he had got on shore, and old Pumpbolt; and we were in the very middle of it, when down came Wadding, the gunner.—"Beg pardon, sir," said the old seaman, sidling in, and trying to appear at his ease, although he was very far from that same. "Beg pardon—but them chaps are coming more nearer, sir, than seems quite convenient—they are fast dropping down with the afternoon's ebb, sir."
"Indeed!" said old Sprawl, "We must keep a bright look-out here, Brail, at any rate."
We went on deck, and the report was literally true; but although the mass above us continued to increase until the whole surface of the river in the distance seemed swarming, as one has seen a pool with those blue water-insects which, I believe, as boys, we used to call sailors, still there was no warlike demonstration made, beyond the occasional descent of a fast-pulling canoe now and then, a mile or so below the main body. But they were always very easily satisfied in their reconnoitring, so far as we could judge, for the whole of them kept a wary distance.
We returned to the cabin for half an hour, and having finished off with a caulker of good cogniac, all hands of us once more came on deck.
It was now half-past four, and low water as near as could be. The bar astern of us—by this time the breeze having taken off, we were riding to the ebb—was one roaring ledge of white breakers; but it was smooth water where we lay, the fall of the tide having completely broken the heave of the heavy swell that rolled in from the offing on the bar. The clouds had risen over the land, some large drops of rain fell, and altogether we had strong prognostications of a wet, if not a tempestuous evening.
The declining sun, however, was yet shining brightly; and although, calculating on the average at this season hereabouts, one might have made himself almost sure of a fine evening, yet the present was an exception, and we had every appearance of a thunderstorm.
All nature seemed hushed; the thick clouds that arose in the east, sailed along on the usual current of the trade-wind with their edges as well defined as if it had been a dark screen gradually shoving up and across the arch of the blue empyrean; this gloomy canopy crept on and on, and as it overlapped us and stole down the western horizon, every thing assumed a deep dusky purple hue.
In the sudden darkness, the fires glanced bright and red on board of three war-canoes, that had now been suddenly advanced down the river in the shape of a triangle, the headmost being within a mile of us. Presently, the sable curtain descended within a very few degrees of the western horizon, until there was only a small streak of bright golden sky between it and the line of the land; in the centre of which the glorious sun, now near his setting, shot his level beams of blood-red light over the river and its banks, and the trees that grew on them, gilding the dark sides of the canoes; and as he sank, his last rays flashed up into the black arch overhead, until the dark masses of cloud glowed like crimson.
This soon faded—the clouds gradually sinking in the west, until, as if their scope had been expended, they lifted from the eastern horizon majestically slow—like a magnificent curtain drawn up in order to disclose the glorious moon, which now, preceded by her gemlike forerunner the evening star, that sparkled bright and clear on the fringe of the ascending cloud, rose above the low swampy banks, like a diamond on the skirt of a sable velvet mantle.
Her disk, when she first appeared, was red and dim, until she attained a considerable altitude, when, having struggled through the pestilential effluvia that hovered over the river, she began to sail through her liquid track in all her splendour—pale, but oh, how crystal clear!—driving, like a queen, the dark vapours before her.
As the night wore on, the congregation of canoes became thicker, and presently something like a raft floated down to within three quarters of a mile of us, accompanied by five large boats, full of people.
It was clearly distinguishable, from a bright halo of luminous smoke that hovered over it, proceeding from a fire that every now and then blazed up on board. By the time the raft was anchored, the evening breeze came strong down the river, wafting towards us the sounds of African drums, blended with dismal yells, as of captives, and loud fierce shouts.
I directed my glass towards the name, that was flashing fitfully, as if tar or rosin, or some other equally inflammable substance, had been suddenly cast into it.
"What can that be?" said I, to young De Walden, who was also spying away at the same object, close to where I stood.
"Really," said the very handsome boy, "I cannot well tell, but I will call Serjeant Quacco, sir. He knows all the practices of the savages hereabouts."
"No, no," rejoined I; "never mind—never mind; but what can they be doing there on the raft? I see two uprights about five feet asunder, and judging from the dusky figures that are cruising about them, and the fire that is kindled beneath, as it were between them, they should be about eight feet high above the raft on which they are rigged. What are they after now? Two fellows sitting on men's shoulders, are fixing a cross piece, or transom, on the top of the uprights—now they are lashing it to them tightly with some sort of rope—ah, they descend, and the fire seems to have gone out, for every thing is dark again."
All in the neighbourhood of the raft was now undistinguishable, but small red fires began to burn steadily in the three advanced canoes.
"What next?" said Sprawl.
"Oh, I suppose, having set their piquets for the night, we are safe." And I took the glass from my eye, and banged the joints of it one into another, when De Walden spoke.
"Please look again, sir—please look again." I did so. The gibbet sort of erection that I had been inspecting, was now lit up by a sudden glare of bright crimson flame. The dark figures, and the bows and sides of